In your bag No: 646 – Jesse Freeman

In your bag No: 646, Jesse Freeman
Jesse writes the book reviews for JCH, and he makes movies too. And now he is going to share his bag with us. I have been waiting for this one for a while now. Come and check out the bag of a JCH featured writer.
I decided to do a second in your bag feature. My first was well before I started doing the book reviews on the site, so thought it would be nice to write about something else for the site, especially since I am horrible at technical details about cameras.
This bag is quite different from my last in that this is the set-up I use to shoot my short films with.

Starting clockwise-ish, I use a Porter duffle bag. It is the only bag I have that can fit everything. I learned from my first film that no matter what, you should always clean your lens before every shot. I had one major scene in my first film where there were just spots all over the shot. So I always have a cloth and blower.

In the smaller Porter case is my Ricoh GR1s that I always have on me. Still getting use to it, but with digital I always worry about batteries, so I always keep two and charger.

The lenses are Leica R lenses I got from my ikebana teacher. They are apart of the Safari edition Leica R3 set that she got when she was a university student. It came with a 50mm f2 Summicron, a 28mm f2.8 Elmarit, and a 180mm f4 Elmar in an olive drab color. The character is just amazing on these Leica lenses. I also have a plastic Canon 35mm f2 lens, but lent that to a friend for the time being.

The camera is a Canon 5D Mark II that I bought from photographer Patrick Tsai. He was nice enough to sell it to me on payment, which I am still grateful for, because I had been borrowing DSLRs to shoot my last two films.

I have a busted iPhone 4 that gets the job down.

I use a film canister as a coin case since I lost my matching Louis Vuitton case and an APC one that was giving to me. I have had the LV wallet and key holder for over five years now and they still look brand new. I really just love the quality and history behind them.

For this current film I’m working on, I decided to use a monopod which I coupled with a friend’s steadicam for a few tracking shots. Manfrotto is just great!

For last minute inspiration I carry the Cahier du Cinema article compilation from the 50s book. Some of the greatest writings on cinema ever came from this magazine in the 50s and 60s. A scene from a western starring Gary Cooper called Vera Cruz as described in one of the articles in the book inspired the basis of my current film.

I story board all my films in a Muji notebook. It has 6 boxes on every page that I guess are suppose to be for manga, but I use them to story board and I constantly reference my crappy drawings on sets.

I still always carry a flask with bourbon, though I don’t drink as much making films as I do when I am doing photography. I also got in the habit of having aspirin at all times.

My stuff is constantly linked so it would be redundant here I think…So thank you for checking this out!

Thanks for the bag Jesse. It is very interesting to see how it has changed. Those R lenses are gorgeous. Looking forward to your next film.
Check out Jesse’s work by following this link to all of the book reviews, which are awesome by the way.
Don’t forget to come and comment too.

Keep them coming folks, we need more submissions, so get your bag on Japancamerahunter.com. Send me a hi resolution image of the bag (please make sure it is horizontal) and its contents, with some details about yourself and what you shoot. Oh and don’t forget your contact details (twitter, flickr, tumbler et al). Send the bag shots here. Please understand that there is a long wait now as there is a backlog of submissions. Not all make the cut, so make sure yours is funny/interesting/quirky. And please make sure the shot is of good quality, as the ones that are not do not go up.